Boundary physics experiments in tokamaks

聚变能研究旨在利用为太阳和恒星提供动力的相同过程。研究是在除加拿大之外的所有八国集团国家的大型政府实验室中进行的。申请人通过与许多这样的实验室的研究人员合作来进行他的研究，产生由他本人、他的研究生和多伦多大学的研究助理进行的项目。 OEDGE是由申请人和他的多伦多小组开发的大型计算机代码，用于对诸如托卡马克之类的磁约束聚变装置边缘处的热等离子体的行为进行解释建模，其中发生等离子体与固体结构（“壁甲”）的相互作用。 OEDGE 目前已被欧洲和美国的许多主要聚变实验室使用。随着 2005 年 6 月决定将耗资 100 亿美元的 ITER 托卡马克项目选址法国，聚变研究进入了一个新阶段。 ITER 是由工业国家组成的国际联盟建造的，旨在展示聚变能源的科学可行性。 ITER 将“燃烧”氚，这种物质在自然界中含量很少。加拿大的 CANDU 裂变反应堆以每年几公斤的速度生产氚作为不需要的副产品，使加拿大成为世界上商业氚的主要来源。 ITER 的运行计划基于加拿大氚的供应情况。 ITER将在未来几十年内需要加拿大的大部分产量，超过10公斤，价值10-1亿美元/公斤。当当前一代碳铠装聚变装置使用氚进行操作时，发现引入机器的大约一半的氚以碳共沉积的形式保留在容器中并且不能轻易回收。外推到 ITER 表明，经过几天的运行，可以用这种方式束缚 1 公斤的氚。由于 ITER 中允许的容器内氚库存仅为 0.35 千克，这造成了严重的问题。为了解决这个氚保留问题，所提议的研究将涉及申请人的小组在美国的DIII-D托卡马克中提出、设计和进行实验，并用我们的OEDGE代码解释它们。

Fusion energy research aims to harness the same process that powers the sun and stars. Research is carried out in large governments labs in all G8 nations except Canada. The Applicant carries out his research by collaborating with researchers in a number of these labs, generating projects to be undertaken by himself, his graduate students and research associates at the University of Toronto. OEDGE is a large computer code developed by the Applicant and his Toronto group for interpretive modeling of the behaviour of the hot plasma at the edge of the magnetic confinement fusion devices such as tokamaks, where plasma interaction with the solid structure ('wall armour') occurs. OEDGE is now used by a number of the major fusion labs in Europe and the US. Fusion research has entered a new phase with the decision in June 2005 to site the $10 billion ITER tokamak project in France. ITER is being built by an international consortium of industrial nations to demonstrate the scientific feasibility of fusion energy. ITER will 'burn' tritium, a substance which occurs only in small quantities in nature. Canada's CANDU fission reactors produce tritium as an unwanted by-product at the rate of a few kg/year, making Canada the main source of commercial tritium in the world. ITER's operational plans are based on the availability of Canadian tritium. ITER will require most of Canada's production over the next several decades, more than 10 kg, worth $10-100 million/kg. When the present generation of carbon-armoured fusion devices was operated with tritium, it was found that about half of the tritium introduced into the machine was retained in the vessel in carbon co-deposits and could not be readily recovered. Extrapolation to ITER indicates that 1 kg of tritium could be tied up in this way after a few day's operation. Since the permitted in-vessel tritium inventory in ITER is only 0.35 kg this poses a serious problem. With the aim of solving this tritium retention problem, the proposed research will involve the Applicant's group proposing, designing and carrying out experiments in the DIII-D tokamak in the US, also interpreting them with our OEDGE code.